Posted
by
Roblimo
on Tuesday March 04, 2014 @05:13PM
from the when-you-positively-absolutely-need-to-keep-your-crypto-key-to-yourself dept.

The QuintessenceLabs website doesn't mince words when it comes to self-promotion. It boasts that they are "The world’s first company to harness the quantum properties of lasers to herald a new generation of data security." InvestCanberra says, "the defense and security policy and procurement centre of Australia is the natural location for large conglomerate defense and security corporations and specialist cyber security, advanced communications and radar, ICT and surveillance businesses alike," and goes on to list QuintessenceLabs as one of several "locally headquartered companies that have grown into internationally successful organizations."

Here's another statement taken from the company's website: "QuintessenceLabs is the first in the world to exploit a new generation of quantum cryptographic technology which enables unbreakable, secure storage and communication of sensitive information through the generation of an ultra-secure cryptographic key." Unbreakable? That's a strong boast. Is it true? And even if it's only partly true, your upper management may call on you to explain (and possibly implement) laser-based quantum security, so you need to know what it is and how it works -- and whether it's something your company (or your client companies) need.

John
Leiseboer:QuintessenceLabs is a cybersecurity defense
company. We basically build products that help you generate keys,
manage keys and do that effectively with a security policy so that
the users of those keys know how to use the keys to meet the
requirements of your workenvironment. Quantum Random Number
Generator is actually something we are very proud of. We started like
back in 2008, as a spinoff out of a research group at a university
where work was being done in the experimental field of quantum
physics, related to quantum key distribution.

As part of
that technology development, we had to develop a whole bunch of
components, including what we call the quantum random number
generator. One of the interesting things about quantum key
distribution, is that you need to have a very very high speed source
of true random numbers. And in developing that particular technology,
the QRNG spun out of that, and we found that there are applications
for that in the commercial world as well as in various military and
defense applications as well. So let’s take a walk around the
booth.

What we are
looking at right here is the concept or the demonstration of a
concept of the extraction of entity from a quantum vacuum state. So
the system here is displaying a laser that is called a coherent
laser. In fact, it is a very finely tuned laser. As it is finely
tuned, it also acts as a carrier of quantum information. The quantum
information that is in fact encoded in this laser is a vacuum state.
Random numbers in other words.That’s because in the
quantum world a vacuum actually does have energy—the
spontaneous creation and destructive energy. The way we can actually
measure that you require an apparatus like this. So we a laser, a
beam splitter, which is splitting the laser beam into two equal
components and then we subtract those. In the classical world, what
that would end up being is a vacuum—nothing. But in the quantum
world, because it is a quantum state that we are actually carrying on
the laser and splitting, we end up with the quantum vacuum energy.

We measure
that by subtracting the laser from itself and then amplifying and
filtering that signal, converting it to a digital signal, and
converting that again into the actual random numbers that ultimately
end up as key material. Obviously this is just a concept. It is
really meant to just show and explain what the basic source of
entropy is. That’s the splitting of that laser to bring the
quantum back in. What we’ve actually implemented is obviously a
little bit more sophisticated and a bit more practical. Over here, we
have a rackmount chassis and towards the rear of the chassis you will
notice that there is a card which has on it an aluminum box with the
label which says QuintessenceLabs. That box has within it the optic
components, so in there, we do have a laser, we have all the beam
splitting components, the photo detectors which convert the light
signal into an electrical current. And we have the subtraction
circuitry that subtracts those two beams that I was talking about
earlier.From the particular box, that very high frequency
RF signal is then taken to some analog processing where we amplify
it, we filter it, we frequency shift it. So it basically allows to
get it into the digital domain. So once we’ve done all that
preprocessing, we then pass the signal to an analog to digital
converter and from there, we then go to a very high speed field
programmable gate array which has internal circuitry just used to
condition that random signal to produce the random numbers with a
uniformdistribution.

There are all
sorts of applications for random numbers. I mean, the most well-known
use for random numbers is to seed a key generator. And keys are
obviously required in cryptography.Whether that be
symmetric keys or asymmetric keys you have to start with some truly
random source somewhere. So that’s one application—a very
common application. Other applications most communications protocols,
secure communications protocols also require some element of
randomness within them. You think of that SSL/TLS the transport layer
security protocol. Every time you need to have a session with that,
you have to generate a symmetric key, you would also probably often
use a block cipher that requires an initialization vector.Usually
that’s done with a random number. But if you are using an
algorithm like DSA digital signature algorithm, part of that
algorithm is the requirement to have a nonce, a random number that
got itself repeated is actually a very good source of a nonce.So
there are many different areas in the security field where you find a
good need for random.

In addition
to that, there are non-security related areas, simulation is a
classic example. So the best most realistic simulations you need to
as closely as possible simulate real world events. Most real world
events have some element of random to them. Think about a tree. Think
about a tree in a forest. Think about the leaves on that tree. Each
individual leaf has some element of random movement. A high speed
good quality random allows you to build simulators of for example,
leaves on trees, which will be used in larger simulations yet again
to give very realistic applications.And I guess the final
there is, all sorts of modeling applications, scientific modeling,
mathematical modeling, modeling of weather, and all those sort of
applications large quantities of good quality random numbers are
essential.

One thing I
didn’t mention is the gaming industry.Of course
they like to bias their random in certain ways. One of the best ways
to bias your random is have a very good filtering function that’s
treated with true random, then apply whatever manipulations you
require, to make sure the output matches what you wanted it. But you
start with a biased source, a bias of even more, you are not going to
necessarily get the bias you want. But true random in, bias it the
way you wish, and the gaming industry can make as much as they like
out of it. We actually started our R&D up around in 2008, and
this is 2014, so I guess the rough guess there is approximately six
years. On that way, we’ve developed many different products
that have been spinoffs of the basic technology. The actual effort
gone of this particular development is probably closer to that two to
two and a half years’ duration involving a team of peak load of
about seven to eight individual engineers.

Well, "quantum crypto" should really be called "quantum key distribution". It's the key distribution part that's "unbreakable" - the rest is just AES or whatever. However, key management is the interesting part of cryptography for attackers: it's easier to somehow find the key than to attack the math.

And the quantum aspect doesn't actually prevent an attacker from snooping during key distribution, but it does provably let you discover that snooping has happened, and act accordingly, which is a valuable th

Not it doesn't. Alice can't differentiate between Bob reading the message and an attacker performing a MITM attack

.This depends on your definition of "quantum crypto".
End-to-end quantum cryptography allows you to know whether your communication has been intercepted. It IS theoretically immune to MITM. Simple quantum key generation or exchange however, may not be.

Right. Alice can differentiate between Bob reading the message and a Man in the Middle interception, because to intercept the message, the man in the middle has to read the quantum bit -- that is, in the photon case, measure the polarization-- and reading it destroys it. The Man in the Middle can't then send on a copy of the quantum bit, because of the quantum no-cloning theorem. She can send a photon polarized in a way identical to the way she read the photon-- but that only works if the receiver, Bob, happens to choose the same polarization to measure that the Man in the Middle chose to measure.

There is, however, a footnote to this. Eve actually can clone the photon (cloning photons is what a laser does). But she can't clone it perfectly-- or, more specifically, she can't be sure that the "cloned" photon is actually a copy of the original, or a spurious ("spontaneous emission") photon that happens to be in the same place. So, if she clones the photon, and measures one copy, and sends the other copy on, this shows up as noise in the signal-- exactly the same as stray light. So, Eve can read some of the message, if she's sufficiently clever, but how much is limited by how much noise the people communicating will accept in the signal without realizing that they are tapped.

"So, Eve can read some of the message, if she's sufficiently clever, but how much is limited by how much noise the people communicating will accept in the signal without realizing that they are tapped."

Right. So if you're using any kind of compression or other scheme that requires accurate reception of a whole packet to re-assemble it (via CRC as a check for example), you can render that partial interception non-useful to your MITM.

It's pretty much theoretical at this point, since we really don't have practical end-to-end quantum crypto yet. But it may not be too far off.

2: Use an encryption algorithm known only to the parties intending to communicate. Try not to use ROT13. It's trivial to shit out an algorithm that is so complex and bizarre no one will ever figure it out, but hard to make one that is also easy to use without leaving shit for your enemies to find.

Do you have a reference for this? The prevailing wisdom suggests that it's quite difficult to create a secure encryption algorithm - so difficult that only a few algorithms are in widespread use. An algorithm that is complex and bizarre is also complex to prove that it's secure, and could have some fatal weakness that's unearthed that makes cracking it feasible.

2: Use an encryption algorithm known only to the parties intending to communicate. Try not to use ROT13. It's trivial to shit out an algorithm that is so complex and bizarre no one will ever figure it out, but hard to make one that is also easy to use without leaving shit for your enemies to find.

Do you have a reference for this? The prevailing wisdom suggests that it's quite difficult to create a secure encryption algorithm - so difficult that only a few algorithms are in widespread use. An algorithm that is complex and bizarre is also complex to prove that it's secure, and could have some fatal weakness that's unearthed that makes cracking it feasible.

Widespread use of such algorithms by militaries, spies, serial killers, etc. that are typically only cracked when enemies get their hands on encoding/decoding materials.

For example, using a reference text such as a book or newspaper, using daily events such as weather/temperature/baseball scores, etc. all as part of a convoluted transformation scheme.

For example: The Dodgers beat the Mariners 4 to 2 in their last game, the temperature in Timbucktoo was 62 degrees as reported in a specific newspaper, and yo

Not it doesn't. Alice can't differentiate between Bob reading the message and an attacker performing a MITM attack.

If that were all it did, it would still be valuable, as it's harder to hide a device that can do that than it is to hide a simple tap. But that's not true - that's the "quantum" part.

Alice sends Bob a photon polarized along a basis randomly chosen by Alice. Bob measures the polarization along a randomly chosen basis. If the bases were the same, one bit was successfully sent, if not it's noise (polarization as measured "up-down" gives no information at all about what you would have measured "left-right",

I'm pretty sure if I was transmitting with tachyons you'd have to have access to the past to intercept it. Which means you would have had to have already intercepted it, or it would be impossible to intercept.

Quantum crypto reminds me of holographic storage. Yes, it works, but there are not many efforts in the real world implementing it.

The quantum crypto link isn't really about sending data. It is mainly creating a key and sending it via a secure link (where both sides will either resend, or keep generating random bits until they have enough non-snooped key material.)

I've not heard any explanation for how such systems prevent a man in the middle attack, I suspect the answer is simply that they don't. Of course, if you were to combine quantum cryptography with more pedestrian forms you might be able to make the claim, but if you're going to do that aren't there easier methods of unbreakable communication?

While there are other techniques that can be used to make 2-party-only communications, quantum secured methods have the advantage that there is no known way to recreate a photon with the same properties as the one you had to intercept to XOR against that bit that was sent in a clear channel (assuming you even know which property is being used to modify the data feed).

You don't need to if you're truly a man in the middle, what you need is two setups just like the people you are eavesdropping on. During negotiation, you receive a photon from Alice, you send a different photon on to Bob. When information comes down, you decrypt it with the first photon, read what you want, then re-encrypt it with the second.

I've not heard any explanation for how such systems prevent a man in the middle attack, I suspect the answer is simply that they don't.

Quantum secured transmission prevents eavesdroppers. Well, that's not entirely true either, it makes a very unstable communication situation that will be obviously disrupted in the case of an eavesdropper. While there are other techniques that can be used to make 2-party-only communications, quantum secured methods have the advantage that there is no known way to recreate a photon with the same properties as the one you had to intercept to XOR against that bit that was sent in a clear channel (assuming you even know which property is being used to modify the data feed).

Any location that the signal is decoded is vulnerable. Always has been, always will be. In practice, quantum secured communications are the modern take on one-time-pad crypto. Send the key by one channel, the data by another, and put the bulk of your effort in making sure that one of those is safe so that the other side is useless even if intercepted.

Alice sure as hell knew how to create that photon, and Bob either:A: Knew what to expect in the message (or meta data) in order to verify that photon was legit.B: Didn't actually verify shit.

If an attacker can't generate a specific photon, they can generate any photon and generate the data the same way Alice did.The only way to detect such an attack is to have a timing window so tight that the attacker can't do that. The internet being what it is, and even dedicated fiber links being what they are, this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q... [wikipedia.org] has an explanation of how to do it in such a way that the existence of a person in the middle can be detected. It boils down to "A flips a coin while sending each photon, B flips a coin when receiving each photon, they ignore photons where the coins came up differently, and if the bits where the coins were the same are perturbed by an eavesdropper, messages will be corrupted visibly." Yeah, comparing the coins is out of band, but it doesn't have to be secure because the att

Claiming unbreakable is idiotic and is just an indicator that the people at said company have no imagination. We have no idea what new techniques will be developed over the next year or 2 let alone decades and to make a claim something is unbreakable is just asking to be shot down, look how well the "unbreakable" claim worked for Oracle.

It's a one-time pad system. OTP systems are theoretically unbreakable. The weakness of OTP systems occurs during the exchange or transmission of the OTP to the recipient.They claim that "Any attempt to intercept the exchange of the key causes detectable variations in the quantum states carrying the cryptographic key, alerting both sender and receiver to the attack and allowing them to take mitigating action."

It appears to me that the catch is that transmissions must remain on the fiber link of their equipme

It should be possible in theory to create a quantum communication system that can't be tapped in any way. For it to be useful though, there is the issue of cost, reliability, error rate, bandwidth etc.

Even then if I had an absolutely perfect system - two boxes that magically communicate with each other, I still haven't solved the great majority of data loss issues. Most data loss is not from people breaking strong encryption, it is from weakness in the entire system - from data left for memory scrapers,

Oh, so now we get modded down for calling out concocted stories? Yup, that's about the limit for me. 1. To date there is no working quantum computer that has even been properly validated, so no. 2. Since when do editors post non-submitted content, or content not referencing the submitter? 3. SHENANIGANS!!!

There is no perfectly secure system - there is ALWAYS a way to break it. Even one-time pads, which are mathematically as perfect as the source of random numbers they use, are subject to MITM attacks and to trying to break the random key (the Soviets tried to do this - even atmospheric radio noise isn't completely, 100% unpredictable).

And that's ignoring the fact that what you want to protect is information - the channel it's transmitted on is not the only place it exists. Is it stored anywhere? Is the stora

One-time pads are considered a symmetric encryption and considered as insensitive to MITM. Also one-time pads, if implemented properly, are considered unbreakable because you will be getting a bona fide random text. Not truly random, but theoretically considered unbreakable.

You cannot break the key in a properly implemented OTP. You have no way knowing which of the 8 zillion possible valid plaintexts was actually sent.

The weaknesses are only:
* If the OTP repeats-- that is, the key is not the same length as the message. For an unbreakable 2KB OTP message, you need a 16000bit key (2KB).
* If the OTP is generated deterministically-- it is not random.
* Key distribution is vulnerable. No matter what method you use, unless it is face to face, the OTP can be "broken" by intercepting the key.
* Key storage. If anyone captures your OTP booklet or file, you have no security whatsoever.

If you figure those out, its "perfectly" secure-- but as mentioned it basically requires face-to-face before hand OTP distribution and storing the OTP keys in a physical, airgapped vault.

Looking at their web site, I notice a few things. Namely, if you want any specifics, you need to "Inquire" by providing contact information so that their horde of sales representatives can contact you with the information you desire. But for the bit of information you can get without giving them contact information, I quote the following little gem from their web site involving modes of operation.

Key Expansion

When very high rates of data encryption are necessary, key expansion can be used in which the QKD k

This is not a new technology [wikipedia.org], and have been under lab testing for a while now. The problem is that what's theoretically unbreakable isn't that secure in practice. Turns out it's quite hard to distinguish between eavesdropping and noise.

And, like any random source, you can use it for an unbreakable one time pad. That's cool.

So I guess the question is "are there problems with current hardware random number generators?", and probably "what are the failure states for this new method, how do they arise, and how hard are they to detect?"

Regardless of those answers, there's still going to be limited utility for something like this. I don't think a lot of gamers are worried about game randomness not being random enough (which is a ridiculous ap

Well tested, familiar conventional crypto algorithms are very, very hard to break. With correctly generated keys of sufficient length, they are practically unbreakable for longer than most secrets need to be kept.

But that doesn't mean *systems* built around those algorithms are unbreakable. It's all that stuff around the strong cryptographic algorithms that introduces weakness.

So claims of "unbreakable" algorithms or system components don't get me excited. If you want to make me sit up and take notice, c

The problem for Australia is the lack of dedicated hardened Australian only mil communications networks.
The mil networks used are telco quality, shared and owned/built by other countries.
Australia hopes to escape this hardware reality by using secure Australian quantum tech.
Any network and Australian only data is super safe... from Asia, faith based spies, Russians, GCHQ, NSA, EU...
Australia faces staff issues with many of its experts been very close to other countries - faith, generations of shared mi

Don't tell a crowd of nerds that your new product is unbreakable, unless you actually want them to try very, very hard to break it. It's like waving a flag at a bull, you'd better have your pads laced up nice and snug, because you're goin' for a ride.

As with all such schemes, this only does the key exchange. You still have conventional crypto in use for the data transfer. And quantum crypto implementations have been broken before, so even if the quantum-mechanic assumptions hold up (and that is a big "if"), this is likely far from "unbreakable". It has a number of severe limitations though, like needing its own network (in addition) and inability to route or switch traffic.

I call BS. All they are doing is generating noise from a laser. Anyone can do this with a laser and a detector diode. Splitting the beam and subtracting is nothing novel. I did this back in junor high in science class. (Back then a laser was a much bigger deal, but still.)

His discussion of the ADC is nice, but again, that's standard stuff. Same goes for his TLS talking points.

Wonder what the value prop for quantum approach v. a few TB hard disks where (:RDRAND:) is used to fill each with the same garbage installed at each peer. A modern HDD is more than enough for years of voice, email, and file transfers all without any fancy lasers, beam splitters or having to part with countless thousands of dollars.

While in anything resembling a real network with lots of communicating parties the required number of disks quickly become impractical are there any remaining differences worth c